Tobacco Bill's Defeat Leaves K-12 Plans Uncertain

Last week's failure of a massive tobacco-settlement bill in the
Senate added new urgency to efforts by the Clinton administration and
education lobbyists to find money to pay for class-size reductions and
other programs with funding contingent on new cigarette taxes.

Prospects for the anti-smoking bill's eventual passage dimmed
considerably when the Senate failed to block a filibuster on the
measure last week. The 43 Republicans who voted to continue debate on
the bill said that recent amendments had made it too costly and too
bureaucratic.

The bill will remain stalled indefinitely, "until we find a way we
can get together on something that is much smaller, that is targeted
and limited, that is not just more government from Washington," said
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss.

President Clinton and Senate Democrats said last week that they
would try to attach the tobacco bill to any other major bill that comes
to the Senate floor. If they fail, they plan to portray Republicans as
caving in to the tobacco industry during the upcoming fall
congressional elections.

"I certainly hope there will be [political consequences if the bill
fails], and there should be," Mr. Clinton said shortly after the Senate
sustained its filibuster. "When the American people understand fully
what has been going on, they won't like what they see, and they will be
worried about these children," who would be targeted for new
anti-smoking programs under the bill.

The measure, which was designed to raise $500 billion over the next
25 years, has been the subject of debate in the Senate for the past
month. During that process, the Senate added several new wrinkles to
the bill, including language that would allow students to transfer out
of schools if they were victims of campus violence.

Cash Cow

Perhaps most importantly for schools, the bill was once seen as a
cash cow to pay for a variety of domestic programs. In his State of the
Union Address in January, Mr. Clinton unveiled a seven-year, $12
billion program to reduce K-3 class sizes, with the money coming from
the tobacco settlement.

At the time, administration officials said they hoped to get
class-size-reduction money from a tobacco bill that might emerge from a
House-Senate conference committee, or from a tax bill that could pass
before Congress recesses in early October. Another possibility would be
drawing the first year of class-size-reduction money from the fiscal
1999 appropriations bill for education that Congress is expected to
pass in the fall.

But right now, none of those scenarios looks likely, according to
Washington players.

Because the Senate is stalled on its tobacco bill, the House is
unlikely to act on its own anti-smoking legislation. In addition, no
major tax bills are on the horizon, and caps on domestic spending leave
no room for major new programs, such as the $1 billion needed for the
down payment on the proposed seven-year program to shrink class
sizes.

"The allocations aren't going to allow for growth in normal things,
let alone a billion-dollar new initiative," said Edward R. Kealy, the
executive director of the Committee for Education Funding, an umbrella
group for numerous organizations that lobbies for federal school
aid.

The only lever to force a solution, Mr. Kealy suggested, would be if
Congress felt political pressure to show some major accomplishments on
the eve of the midterm elections. That could prod the lawmakers into
acting on a tobacco bill, a tax bill, or increases in the annual
appropriations bills, with new domestic programs tacked onto one or
more of them.

Even so, some politicians may prefer to do nothing and simply debate
the merits of their ideas on the campaign trail, Mr. Kealy
acknowledged.

So far, that appears to be the path that Senate Republican leaders
are taking. On June 17, after four weeks of debate on the measure, Mr.
Lott called for a "cloture" vote to end discussion. The procedural
maneuver needed 60 votes to succeed. It received 57. The 43 opponents
were Republicans, including Mr. Lott.

House Reluctance

Like Mr. Lott, House GOP leaders are wary of tobacco legislation.
The leadership there opposes the bill's proposed $1.10-cent-a-pack
cigarette tax.

Money from the tax, as well as payments by tobacco companies, would
pay for anti-smoking programs and health research on the federal level.
It also would create a $196 billion block grant to states to reimburse
them for Medicaid expenses incurred by smokers. Governors could choose
to spend a portion of that money on education programs such as the Safe
and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act and the Dwight D. Eisenhower
Professional Development Program.

While Republicans remain reluctant to move forward on the plan,
Democrats plan to be persistent.

"The folks today who are killing this tobacco bill on the floor are
on the wrong side of history," Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., argued
last week.

The National Center
for Tobacco-Free Kids is an alliance of such national health
advocacy organizations as the American Medical Association, the
American Heart Association, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Read the center's statement
on the tobacco industry settlement.

Read a copy of the June 20, 1997, tobacco industry settlement,
which outlines the restrictions on marketing and advertising, the
penalties, and other aspects of the settlement, from the State Tobacco
Information Center.

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